John Parkinson, CTO of TransUnion, gives us the user point of view of cloud computing. He first describes his company and the challenges he is faced with everyday as the Chief Technology Officer of the company. He explains why TransUnion decided to try the cloud (energy costs and lack of talented people at a high level of complexity among others).  Parkinson then describes four use case for the cloud at TransUnion and talks about the results for each problem they decided to try and solve through cloud computing services (software as a service, offloading peak capacity, virtualized large scale archival storage and large dataset hosting and remote access for customers) and for each of them exposes the pros and cons, including the security issue. John Parkinson concludes with the lessons learned at TransUnion about the use of Cloud Computing in their particular case and some final thoughts about cloud computing in general.

John Parkinson is a group vice president and the Chief Technology Officer for TransUnion LLC. As CTO John is responsible for technology strategy, architecture and standards and oversees a continuing program of investments in high availability, information security and business continuity for TransUnion’s systems and services. A senior executive leader and general manager with extensive international experience, John is also the Founder, Chairman & Managing Director of ParkWood Advisors LLC, providing business, technology and communication strategy services to select global clients and working with private equity investment advisors to identify growth opportunities in emerging areas of technology and media. John has over 35 years experience in information and related technologies and over 20 years experience as a consultant on business and technology strategy to many of the world’s largest businesses.Previously he was a Senior Vice President and the Chief Technologist for Capgemini’s Americas Region. At Capgemini he was a founder member of the Group’s Office of the CTO, developing strategy and setting direction for Capgemini’s portfolio of Technology Consulting offers, promoting Technology Innovation, working with early adopter clients and influencing career and competency models for Capgemini’s technology consultants. He was also a member of the firm’s North American business strategy working group.Prior to joining Capgemini in 2001 he was a Senior Partner in the Strategy & Corporate Development Group at Ernst & Young LLP and the Director for Innovation and Strategy for E&Y in the Americas Region. He joined E&Y in the UK in 1985 and moved to the USA in 1991. John has a BS in Mathematics (with minors in economics and behavioral psychology) and an MS in Information Sciences, both from Exeter University, UK. He has been involved with the information technology (IT) business since 1969 and has worked in virtually all roles within IT from programmer to CIO to general manager of an independent software vendor. An example of his work as a solution architect is included in the Computerworld-Smithsonian collection.He has written or edited five books on information systems development and has contributed over 40 papers to conferences and journals. He writes a regular column and blog – “Strong Signals” – for CIO Insight and is a member of their editorial advisory board. He is a frequent speaker at international meetings on Innovation; ecommerce; technology strategy; emerging technologies and related topics. John has been a board member for TeleGuam LLC., the private holding company providing integrated telecommunications services on the island of Guam. He is currently also an external director at TAP.TV and an advisory board member for IOCom and Xtreme Data, innovative technology companies based in Chicago. Additionally John provides advice on potential transactions and on portfolio company operations to Turnstone Capital, a private equity investment group in New York City.In 2003, John was named by Global Consulting News as one of the world’s 25 most influential consultants. In 2004 he was named as Co-chair of the ITAA Committee on RFID and the Chair of the ITAA Task Group on Public Policy Formulation for RFID. In January 2005 he was named as one of the Computerworld 100 Leaders in IT.